Switzerland in Early February

Our trip to Switzerland the first week of February was so much fun. We stayed in Lausanne at the Hotel Movenpick (outstanding customer service and restaurant). We took a chocolate making class at Maison Cailler. It was so much fun and the people there were wonderful. Actually, to a person everyone we met in Switzerland went out of there way to be friendly and welcoming. We stayed at Hotel Silberhorn in Lauterbrunnen and it was as great as described in the guidebook. We had an excellent dinner after skiing all day at Hotel Restaurant Oberland. The skiing starting at Kleine Scheidegg down to the Wengen was so much fun. We took the train back up and skied more. I recommend the Restaurant Allmend - ski in and have their fantastic Rosti. We sledged down a long run above Grindelwald (longer than 5 miles) one day - very exciting. There were no crowds since it was before the European winter breaks. Les Portes de Soleil had terrific skiing also. We were surprised that the expensive Swiss Rail Pass we bought was rarely checked (?) It was a perfect vacation and Rick's Switzerland book was very useful.

"We sledged down a long run above Grindelwald (longer than 5 miles) one day - very exciting" Sounds like the same run I did with my wife and dog. Quite fun, and a good activity if your group contains non-skiërs. As a skier, I actually found sledges harder to control than skis....

Yup, that happened to me too! I finally figured out that the trick to steering those things was to hold the reins in an X pattern, pull with all your might and shift your weight into the turn. I never really got the hang of slowing down, however, so I used the "bail-out-into-a-deep-snow-bank" method. Wouldn't want to use that technique in wet snow, but it worked well enough in deep powder.